Women And Divorce Settlements

How Your Ex Will Waste All Your Money

"If a woman has been financially dependent on a man and now faces being divorced from that man, she's feeling extremely fearful and helpless, so yes — she might grab for more goodies because of this."

Both "more" and "goodies" are perilously relative. One female client told Gadoua wistfully, "I'm only going to get $800,000 out of this divorce." Another spent part of her settlement on a facelift "because she felt like she had given up so much for her husband," having lost her looks while raising his kids.

"She thought: God damn it, I'm going to do something for me."

Revenge surgery

This reflects a growing trend in what's known as "revenge surgery." The UK's Transform Cosmetic Surgery Group reported recently that 26% of its clients are newly divorced females — a 62% jump since last year. 34% of TCSG's Botox patients are new divorcees. A whopping 48% of its female patients consider their treatments a form of revenge.

How to avoid buying Botox for someone you love now but someday might not?

Not necessarily by getting a fancy prenup, warns Martin Shenkman.

"Everybody tells you, 'Get a prenup. Don't get married without one.' That's the word on the street. In this economy, with so many young couples losing their houses, does that really make sense? Instead of spending five grand on a prenup, they could spend two grand on a financial plan.” Facilitated not by lawyers but by Certified Financial Planners, such plans strengthen a couple's finances while educating them on money management. This benefits both partners in the long run, Shenkman says.

He also advises men to exercise caution: "Not only about the money you've got in the bank. What's more important is your money that's not yet in the bank." If your parents or other benefactors plan to leave you an inheritance, ask them to put it not into a living trust but "a lifetime trust that is yours for the rest of your life."

Get an independent trustee

"Most moms and dads make the mistake of putting inheritance money into trusts that end when their child is 30, because they think that at that age he'll be mature enough to handle it properly. But if Mom and Dad set up a trust for you that ends at age 30, your wife is going to leave you when you're 31."

If you have a lifetime trust "and an independent trustee who's not your wife, then the money stays safe, because it never becomes yours. Once money becomes yours, once it's officially in your name, you can lose it."

"Are celebrities real people with real relationships? Do their prenups have any relevance to the rest of the planet?"

Losing everything

"I can tell you from firsthand knowledge that not only are famous people's relationships different from ours, their issues are different from ours and the solutions to their problems are different from ours — not just because they have more zeroes at the ends of their bank balances, but also because they have much higher divorce rates than the rest of us.

"Among professional athletes, it's 80%."

Schwarzenegger, as it happens, was once a professional athlete.

For some exes, no settlement could ever be big enough. In her 1990 divorce from media mogul John Kluge, former nude model Patricia Kluge bagged a record-breaking $1 billion and a 23,500-square-foot, 45-room home on 3,000 acres. After remarrying, she spent over $90 million on a 900-acre Virginia winery. She spent lots more on other things as well; so much, in fact, that she declared bankruptcy in June — after selling off her diamonds and designer clothes.